Friday, March 12, 2010

About the Joseph Loundy Human Rights Project

The Joseph Loundy Human Rights Project is a unique program that engages students in policy planning and research in the field of human rights here and abroad. Each year, we address a different issue by a comparative analysis of a human rights issue as it is currently being addressed both in Chicago and in one other city abroad. We specifically analyze the structural, procedural and cultural aspects of both local and national settings that influence the current status of human rights problems and suggest routes to their amelioration. The program is very student- led, with students eventually compiling published reports that suggest comparative lessons and ways forward in the issue at hand, and students are often directly engaged in implementing the solutions they provide through advocacy activity.

Our undergraduates engage in applied human rights research through, among other things:
-discussions with local experts in particular areas of human rights; essentially our class includes a colloquium of local policy makers, activists, and academics
-reporting back on the status of those rights in a city abroad, as the students share their comparative analysis with our panel of local experts after their return (casting the students in the role of expert one specific aspects of the issue)
-the launch of the policy Plan of Action that the Project creates based on the students research
-international conferences on our focus issues that bring together the students and both local and international experts in the issue area

The Loundy Project was founded by Roosevelt alumnus Joseph Loundy. For more information, contact the Project's director, Bethany Barratt, Associate Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University

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